In looking at the challenges faced by today’s learning and development departments, it’s useful to look back through history at the different strategies that have been adopted to handle two similar, yet different, challenges:

• learning to handle information, knowledge and ideas
• learning for the purpose of work

In the past, there have been some areas of overlap between the two fields but until relatively recently, work has been mostly focused on the creation, buying and selling of goods and services whereas ‘knowledge work’ has been motivated by a desire to better understand the world around us. The way that those ideas have eventually made their way into the world of work doesn’t take away from the fact that the original intention was generally of a less practical nature. [1]

Given that more of the work carried out in developed countries is knowledge work, what lessons can be learned from history to help us support learning and development in the modern economy?

The changing face of work

Society has come a long way in terms of both intellectual development and the type of work people do. In the last few decades, there has been dramatic growth in what Peter Drucker termed knowledge based work. That is, work for which there is no tangible output but is instead defined in terms of information produced, analysis of information or the generation of new ideas. For most managers and nearly all senior leaders in an organisation, this is a significant part of their role.

This is a major shift from the work of previous generations, where most employment was of a more physical nature or did not require such a high degree of knowledge in order to perform. For example, to work as a technician in a hospital laboratory used to require achieving three O-Levels; now it’s difficult to get a place in a lab without a postgraduate qualification because of the complex nature of the work and deep level of expert understanding required to interpret the results. This isn’t just true of sophisticated scientific work, postgraduate qualifications are often required to work in human resources in many organisations, yet it wasn’t that long ago that school level qualifications would suffice.

A review of the history of learning at work (see appendix) reveals that it has evolved from simple observation and imitation to the plethora of different learning strategies employed today. However, the majority of the commonly used instructional techniques used in the modern workplace attempt to improve upon methods developed during the two World Wars. It was at this time that there was a need to train large numbers of people to perform technical, yet mostly physical, tasks and the tools that we had were limited to face-to-face instruction.

Work has changed in the last 50 years but the main instructional and learning support strategies used to support that work haven’t.

The original knowledge work

The development of new knowledge and the application of ideas has taken a rather different path from how people have traditionally learned to do their jobs. When looking at the development of philosophy, science, mathematics and the arts, patterns start to emerge in the types of activities that those engaged in these disciplines participated in:

• accessing the knowledge of experienced practitioners (whether in person or through some other media, such as books)
• informal networking between experts in the field
• collaboration with others
• problem-solving
• debate and constructive criticism
• experimenting with new ideas in practice

The higher order skills required to take advantage of these activities can’t be learned by following simple step-by-step instructions. However, when the hubs of knowledge development and creativity of the last several hundred years are examined, many of the common attributes listed above are demonstrated by the successful, creative and innovative organisations today. Whether it is Microsoft or Google, WL Gore or 3M, the learning culture in these organisations is not a top-down, push of information but a collaborative environment where access to new ideas is used to stimulate and inspire.

A struggling discipline

The huge range of new initiatives and fads over the last 30 years in the field of Learning and Development tells the story of a discipline that has lost its way slightly. The old tried and tested methods of the industrial age no longer work as well as they used to, and this is because the nature of work itself has changed.

Learning and Development departments need to change, learn lessons from the knowledge work of previous generations and apply the tools we have today to improve upon how they carried out work.

Indeed, this is already happening with the dissemination of expert knowledge through the web, the growth of online discussion groups, email exchanges between people working in similar professions (in different organisations), the sharing and debating of ideas through blogs and collaboration between people in different parts of the world through collaborative tools. Forward thinking organisations are tapping into these mechanisms to make it easier for their employees to connect, share and learn.

These aren’t new ways of doing things. The letter writers and coffee house dwellers of the 17th century, the public lecturers of the 18th century, the scientists at Princeton in the 1930s and 1940s, and the developers and entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley were learning in exactly the same ways; they just used different tools. It’s a very different type of learning than Learning and Development departments have been involved in supporting in the past.

The normal paradigm of scheduled events won’t work in the knowledge economy; in order to get a fresh perspective on how they operate, learning professionals could do worse than ask themselves the following questions:

• How do we provide people with access to expert ideas and knowledge without pushing it out through scheduled events and spoon-feeding methods?
• How do we help people connect and collaborate more easily?
• How will we create a culture where mistakes are tolerated and experimentation is encouraged?
• How do we ensure that new ideas are debated and criticised constructively?

More importantly, learning professionals need to work with senior executives to identify the learning and performance culture they want to create to support this type of learning, and the changes that need to occur to make this happen.

There are no one-size-fits-all answers to these questions, but asking them will help Learning and Development departments look at what they do in a different way and begin to find a way forward that really meets the learning and performance needs of the organisation.

[1] I’m painting a story with a very broad brush here, and quite happily admit that exceptions can be found for every statement that I can make. However, I’d argue that the general thrust of the argument is valid.

Appendix: A brief history of learning

A book could be written on the subject of work and knowledge based learning through history, so the notes in this appendix stick to the main trends and significant developments. There is is a European bias to the timeline to keep things simple, but this should not detract from the significant achievements of the Far Eastern and Arabic cultures over the same time period, especially through the Middle Ages, when European cultural development stagnated. Despite these limitations, the main points remain valid.

Pre-history (before 4100 BC)

In the early days of civilisation, before written records were made, knowledge and wisdom gathered by previous generations were passed down through oral recitation. Often this was in the form of stories and poems that were easier to remember.

The concept of work was not yet the same as it is today. People’s ‘work’ was survival, but skills needed to be shared and developed. This was done through observation and imitation in a very similar way that a new person joining an organisation today might spend some time shadowing and watching an experienced member of staff.

Predominant methods

Learning for work	The development of ideas
observation and imitation	the oral tradition

Ancient civilisation (approx 4100 BC to 500 BC)

The development of civilisation enabled people to specialise in ways that were not possible before. The accumulation and passing on of knowledge became something that someone could do for a living.

Outside of the upper echelons of society, the world of work was dominated by the making, buying and selling of goods. During this time, the skills needed to work a trade were usually passed down from father to son, mother to daughter. This concept of someone experienced passing on their knowledge and skills to a younger, inexperienced individual would eventually develop into the concept of an apprenticeship system that we still have in place today.

Predominant methods

Learning for work	The development of ideas
family tradition	teaching/tutoring

Classical antiquity (500 BC to 500 AD)

The Classical period saw the explosion of wealth in certain parts of the world that enabled certain civilisations to develop ideas and the concept of critical thinking to previously unsought levels.

Two developments stand out as influencing how knowledge was passed on to this day. These were the the precursors to modern day universities such as Plato’s Academy, and the first great collections of knowledge such as the great Library of Alexandria .

Plato’s Academy and Aristotle’s Lyceum are examples of the formalising of an informal structure that had developed naturally. The Academy grew from informal meetings held at Plato’s home, where educated men would debate ideas and try to solve intellectual problems. New thinking was developed through Socratic questioning and the studying of problems which needed to be solved.

The Library of Alexandria was just one of several great libraries that were built at this time. These acted as centres of scholarship and research, and attracted scholars from around the known world.

Learning for the purpose of working at this time was still very much based on the passing of skills from one generation to another, observation and imitation. There were several fields, such as scribing, law and certain military roles, where this was not the case. The classroom, or training ground, was used to provide instruction in writing, the law and military strategy. However, these knowledge based jobs were a tiny percentage of the overall jobs market and tended to be the prerogative of the upper classes of society. In addition, the schooling that these professionals received was seen as a first step towards official status, and usually there was a period of apprenticeship to be observed first.

Predominant methods

Learning for work	The development of ideas
family tradition, some schooling for professions	access to knowledge, informal networks, Socratic questioning

Middle Ages (500 AD to 1600 AD)

The Middle Ages were when the concept of apprenticeship was formalised and run by official organisations. A master tradesman would employ a young apprentice as an inexpensive form of labour in return for food, board and formal training in his craft. These arrangements were often overseen by guilds or local government.

This period also saw the establishment of what we would today recognise as universities, including the Universities of Paris, Oxford and Cambridge. Initially, these awarded general degrees based on accomplishment in all the taught subjects, before going on to offer more specialised degrees. Teaching at the university was very similar to today, with students attending lectures, participating in small group tutorials and self-directed study before proving competence in an exam form of assessment.

However, the main focus of these medieval universities was the passing on of knowledge and the development of critical and analytical thinking skills. Towards the end of this period, universities started to change and focus more on encouraging productive thinking – the development of new ideas and ways of viewing the world – which is when active research became a core university activity.

Predominant methods

Learning for work	The development of ideas
apprenticeship, family tradition, schooling for professions	access to knowledge (increasingly through centres of learning such as universities)

17th century

The 17th century saw an explosion in unofficial collaboration that led to new ideas and concepts being proposed and expounded upon at ever-increasing rates.

Intellectuals in the fields of science, maths and history were constantly corresponding with one another, sharing ideas and challenging current thinking over significant distances (Pierre de Fermat and Sir Isaac Newton being two famous examples).

The 17th century also saw some well known examples of the clustering of like-minded individuals who went on to change how we view and interact with the world. Coffee houses in London and Paris housed serious intellectual debate: Paris had the philosophers and artists, while the London coffee houses had a big part to play in the development of the Royal Society and Lloyds of London (a wager made in a London coffee house even led to the publication of Newton’s greatest work, Principia Mathematica).

From this point on, the way that those involved in the development and generation of ideas are prepared to do their work hasn’t changed all that much. The tools used to collaborate, debate and experiment may have changed over time, but the essential approach remained much the same.

Predominant methods

Learning for work	The development of ideas
apprenticeship, family tradition, schooling for professions	collaboration, debate, experimentation, centres of learning

18th and 19th centuries

In the 18th century the Industrial Revolution changed the world of work. The explosion of factories and new ways of working meant that there was a requirement to train a large number of people in a short time on simple techniques, especially on how to operate machinery. This led to the birth of classroom ’sheep dip’ training, with employers taking a lead from schools on how to train a group of people at the same time.

The main influence in the 18th century on the development of new knowledge was the widening of the debate. Up until the 17th century, intellectual debate and collaboration was limited to a relatively small group. The coffee house culture saw an expansion of this, and the 18th century saw the introduction of public lectures and the first wide circulation of groundbreaking works in print. The publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was of international interest, and the debate went back and forth across the public domain. Ideas had started to spread far more widely, and more quickly, than they had in previous centuries.

Predominant methods

Learning for work	The development of ideas
classroom training, apprenticeship, schooling for professions	collaboration, debate, experimentation, centres of learning

Mid 20th century

Two events dominated the first half of the 20th century, and these in turn affected every aspect of those societies involved, including work. During the two world wars, countries that used conscription to swell the ranks of their military needed to find a way of training large numbers of people to perform complex technical tasks. In addition, the civilian workforce needed to transform the output of the country’s factories to supply the war effort. This experience, coupled with the work of management researchers such as B.F. Skinner, led to the development of instructional design – a process informed by tested learning theories.

These instructional models all had a similar make up: steps to identify the requirements of the learner and the stated objective of the learning activity; steps to design and deliver an appropriate intervention; and steps to evaluate the success of the intervention designed.

Similar to the classroom approach of the Industrial Revolution, instructional design was developed with the achievement of competence at a physical task in mind (such as building an aircraft, stripping a machine gun or carrying out military manoeuvres).

Until the the 1950s, managers usually carried out training. However, the success of structured training led to the creation of training departments and training experts. Adam Smith’s timeless economic imperative of the division of labour made this change inevitable.

The 20th century also saw the speeding up of intellectual development. Where new ideas were needed, the environment and the methods were largely unchanged from previous generations. The Manhattan Project involved teams of people collaborating together to solve difficult problems, often at universities. The scientists heading that project corresponded at first, and then were brought together to work near each other and engage with each other socially. Through the process of sharing ideas, challenging each other and debating ideas, the scientists cracked problems in months that it was thought would take years to solve.

Predominant methods

Learning for work	The development of ideas
classroom training, instructional design, apprenticeship, schooling for professions	collaboration, debate, experimentation, centres of learning

1980s to 2010

The last 30 years have seen the increasingly wide-ranging search for ways to improve upon classroom training and instructional design. These include formal coaching and mentoring, accelerated learning, neuro-linguistic programming, brain friendly learning, games based learning, computer based training, elearning, learning management systems, learning content management systems, talent management, and action learning to name but a few.

The predominant methods of learning for the purpose of doing a job, however, have remained classroom training and instructional design, while apprenticeships have fallen in and out of favour with successive governments.

Training for the professions remains largely unchanged, as the route from university to a junior, apprentice-like role that is served for a time before moving up the career ladder has remained the same for doctors, lawyers and accountants for several hundred years.

Predominant methods

Learning for work	The development of ideas
classroom training, instructional design, apprenticeship, schooling for professions, mentoring, coaching	collaboration, debate, experimentation, centres of learning

Other useful resources

A Developmental History of Training in the United States and Europe (a more academic take on the development of training from a researcher at Michigan State University)

A Time Capsule of Training and Learning (a collection of historical developments on Donald Clark’s Big Dog & Little Dog site)

Training: a short history (the CIPD’s take on the history of training)